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Seismic monitoring system strengthened

By Awadh Zabanout MUSCAT -- His Majesty Sultan Qaboos made safety and peace in the Sultanate as top priority and to provide safety to people and necessary infrastructure to protect them from the consequences of disasters such as earthquakes. Under His Majesty's directives, the Ministry of Transport and Communications is giving special attention to construct a centre for monitoring earthquakes, which has been operating since 2001 and a centre for early warning of natural disasters including tsunamis.

The Meteorology Department is entrusted with the construction of tsunami centre during the next two years. Three phases of the Seismological Centre of Sultan Qaboos University ( SQU ) are completed. It consists of 20 fixed stations and 10 mobile devices equipped with the latest devices. This was confirmed by Dr Issa al Hussein, head of the centre.

He said the quake that hit the shores of Japan also had an impact on the ports of the countries bordering the Pacific Coast including the shores of the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Omani citizens were informed by the Civil Defence that there will be no tsunami waves on the beaches of the Sultanate.

Dr Hussein added that the network of seismic monitoring includes establishment and operation of seven stations distributed in Madha, Sohar, Jalan, Mahout, Duqm, Duka and Damit. These stations have been equipped with latest earthquake sensors (Trleom 240), which has high capacity to record local, regional and global earthquakes at high accuracy, in addition to latest numbering equipment (Kwantira 330) and equipment for connecting with satellites to send seismic information from different stations to the seismic centre at the SQU .

The centre also follows-up and operates 13 other stations distributed in different locations in the Sultanate, 10 of which are short-term stations for the first phase that were run in July 2001, while other three were run in June 2004. These seismic stations broadcast information 24 hours via satellite to the Building Centre at the SQU . He said that the centre exchanges seismic information with other centres in the region, according to memorandums of understanding signed between the university and these parties to improve the capacity of these centres.

The centre has begun using the data of some world seismic monitoring stations to improve earthquakes' locations. The centre has an active international co-operation with prestigious American universities such as MET in addition to the Korean Meteorological Research Centre in Turkey.

Dr Hussein said that after the location is chosen, we dig a hole of 3 metres depth and 1 metrer width and separate it from the middle to put a figurative earthquake device "Trleom 240" and then it is linked by the numbering device available on the upper half of the hole. a special room linked to a sending device (modem) is built and is plugged into the dish -- Satellite to send information to the Seismic Centre at Sultan Qaboos University .

Historical information on the tsunami disasters extends back to 479 BC in marine beaches and islands in the Mediterranean Sea. About 350 during the tsunami in the past two centuries led to disasters and deaths among humans like the tsunami that struck eastern Henshaw in Japan in June 15, 1896. It destroyed several villages and about 10000 full houses were removed, which killed 26,000 people. This tsunami wave spread east to Hawaii with a height of 3 metres and continued to the western shores of America and then reflected to reach New Zealand and Australia.

This disaster, returned once again in 1933 to hit the same coast with a wave height of 25 metres, causing 3000 killers. In 1998 tsunami wiped entire village in New Guinea causing 2500 deaths. Finally, the massive tsunami that hit several countries overlooking the Indian Ocean, near the Indonesian island Sumatra, which killed more than 150 thousand people and its influence reached to the southern coast of the Sultanate of Oman and the eastern coast of the African continent, causing havoc and deaths.

The difference between the earthquakes and tsunami is that the large tsunami waves may be more destructive and catastrophic than the medium-sized and large earthquakes except for the large earthquakes that are located near large population centres.

© Oman Daily Observer 2011